2Physics Quote:
"Many of the molecules found by ROSINA DFMS in the coma of comet 67P are compatible with the idea that comets delivered key molecules for prebiotic chemistry throughout the solar system and in particular to the early Earth increasing drastically the concentration of life-related chemicals by impact on a closed water body. The fact that glycine was most probably formed on dust grains in the presolar stage also makes these molecules somehow universal, which means that what happened in the solar system could probably happen elsewhere in the Universe."
-- Kathrin Altwegg and the ROSINA Team
(Read Full Article:
"Glycine, an Amino Acid and Other Prebiotic Molecules in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko" )

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Efimov State Observed

Rudolf Grimm

A Group of 10 Physicists led by Rudolf Grimm at the University of Innsbruck in Austria reported that they've been successful in converting three normal atoms into a special new state of matter called 'Efimov Quantum state' after the Russian scientist Vitali Efimov who proposed this in 1970. Efimov found a remarkable and counterintuitive solution to the notoriously difficult quantum-mechanical three-body problem, which concluded that 3 interacting particles can form a loosely bound system even if the 2-particle attraction is too weak to allow for the binding of a pair.

In order to prove that such a state can exist, experiments were conducted at Grimm's Laboratory on cesium atoms. There, for the first time, physicists were able to observe the Efimov state in a vacuum chamber at the ultra-cold temperature of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, or minus 459.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Two of the three atoms repel one another in close proximity, but when you put three of them together, it turns out that they attract and form this new quantum state.

Efimov's result was a landmark in theoretical few-body physics, but until now these exotic states had not been demonstrated experimentally. Now that has been achieved, this may open up a new research specialty devoted to understanding the quantum mechanical behavior of just a few interacting particles.

The development is detailed in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature. If you are a Physicist, you may like to visit the website of Prof. Cheng Chin (University of Chicago) who is a member of the group that conducted this experiment.

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